*Everyone was nicer to white people

Well… that’s the answer you are going to get.
If you want to be specific, people of different classes (as it was in the past) had more or less income, rich white people could afford color photography.
Also, I am not too sure, but I think the later one was in a newspaper publication or something, because I have seen it before, in which case it was cheaper (and still kinda is) to mass print black and white photos.